FPL notes: Injury updates, Slot on Salah + xG

An enjoyable, chaotic game at Stamford Bridge rounded off the day’s Premier League action.

Here are our Scout Notes from Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool.

READ MORE: FPL notes: Saka on pens, Odegaard injury + Gabriel’s DefCons

READ MORE: FPL notes: Kudus great, Stach v Longstaff + time to sell Richarlison?

READ MORE: FPL Gameweek 7: Saturday’s goals, assists, bonus + ‘DefCon’ points

SLOT ON SALAH + ISAK

Three defeats in a week ensured Arne Slot’s side signed off for the international break in miserable fashion.

The Guardian’s Barney Ronay described the Reds as looking “muddled, albeit still groaning with talent and trapped energy.”

That’s a pretty good way of describing them at present. Bags of potential but at sixes and sevens, perhaps as a result of too much changing, too soon, this summer. You could go from back to front and pick out issues, which is never good: full-backs struggling to settle, Ibrahima Konate‘s (£5.5m) plummet in form, Alexis Mac Allister (£6.3m) and Alexander Isak (£10.6m) not fully fit, Ryan Gravenberch (£5.7m) pushing up too much, Florian Wirtz (£8.1m) in ill-defined roles.

Topping that all off, FPL’s greatest ever player, Mohamed Salah (£14.4m), is stuck in a funk. At least there are openings now, which weren’t there earlier in the season. Wirtz teed him up beautifully for a big chance early in the second half, while Salah then cut in and shot – his trademark move – over the bar minutes later. Chances you’ve seen him bury time and time again in the past.

He also curled a fantastic cross, with the outside of his boot, to Isak before the break, which the Swede nodded over.

Slot was enthused about the positions he took up, amid the growing criticism of the ageing Egyptian elsewhere.

“Did he create today so much because he didn’t play during the week or did he miss the chances because he missed a bit of sharpness that he could have had if he would have played against Galatasaray? We will never know. What I like is that we brought him many times in the position he would like to be in and I would like him to be in, because he’s shown in his career and since I’m here, that in those positions he can score goals. And I think today he had many opportunities to do what he’s done so often. But he is a human being and it’s not like every chance he gets is always a goal.” – Arne Slot on Mohamed Salah

As for Isak, he’s getting a little better with every game, albeit still looking short of Hugo Ekitike‘s (£8.7m) all-round levels. The Swede’s pull-down assist for Cody Gakpo (£7.5m) was excellent and his header from Salah’s ‘trivela’ cross went narrowly over. Those were his only two chance involvements of the game, however.

“The more they play together, the more they will connect. I think that’s what you saw in the second half already a little bit from the start but especially after I had to take [Ibrahima] Konate off because he felt his quad, when Ryan [Gravenberch] started to play in that position, we were able to get our attackers much more in promising situations much more than in the first half.” – Arne Slot on Mohamed Salah and Alexander Isak

At least it’s Manchester United next…

CENTRE-HALF INJURY SCARES FOR BOTH CLUBS

The last thing both clubs needed were injuries at centre-half. Chelsea were already four centre-backs down going into Gameweek 7, while Liverpool simply haven’t got the depth thanks to a failed pursuit of Marc Guehi (£4.8m) and an ACL injury sustained by Giovanni Leoni (£5.0m).

So alarm bells went when Konate, Benoit Badiashile (£4.4m) and Josh Acheampong (£4.0m) all went off in the second half.

Luckily, it doesn’t sound too bad, especially for the Chelsea pair.

“The two central defenders, it was just prevention. Because they made a great effort today, but just prevention. We spoke with them already and they said that they are OK, so good for us.” – Willy Caballero

“I don’t know if it is a big injury, but what I do know is he limped a little bit and when I asked him, he said he felt his quad a little bit. Then, for me, all alarm bells go off because in another sprint, you never know if that is going to go good.

“It was also already a substitution I had in mind, maybe for a few minutes or a little bit later, because the right centre-back had a lot of ball possession and we needed to create from that position. We all know Ryan [Gravenberch] is quite good in that.

“It might be OK that he went off early enough but it was clear I had to take him off because he was limping.” – Arne Slot on Ibrahima Konate

GOAL-MACHINE CAICEDO

Moises Caicedo (£5.7m) is, unthinkably, second in the FPL midfielders’ points standings.

He’s got three goals to his name already in 2025/26, as many as he managed in the last three seasons combined.

So is this a new role for him, with more attacking abandon? Not really: he’s only touched the ball three times in the penalty box this season, while he’s the biggest xG overachiever in the league, having only amassed 0.52 expected goals:

Above: The Premier League’s biggest xG overachievers this season

Expect the goals to dry up, then. On the flip side, as ‘lucky’ as he’s been with the goals (there was no luck involved with his fine strike against Liverpool), he’s been unfortunate to miss out on DefCon points in the last two Gameweeks, finishing one contribution short on both occasions:

Above: Moises Caicedo’s weekly breakdown of defensive contributions

Enzo Fernandez (£6.7m) remains the affordable Chelsea central midfielder with the bigger goal threat, at least so long as Cole Palmer (£10.3m) is out and he’s operating higher up the pitch, here being denied a fourth goal of the season by the woodwork.

Speaking of being higher up the pitch, Enzo Maresca used Malo Gusto (£4.9m) as a bona fide midfielder alongside Caicedo. Perhaps horses for courses and forced by fitness issues elsewhere, but very well he did too.

Joao Pedro (£7.7m) was again quiet, eventually being replaced by joint-cheapest FPL forward Marc Guiu (£4.3m) for his first Chelsea minutes of the season.

Estêvão (£6.5m), another late substitute, grabbed the dramatic late winner, meeting Marc Cucurella‘s (£6.1m) low cross to give the Spaniard his second assist of the campaign. DefCon points still elude Cucurella: he finished one short again on Saturday.

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